What is HTTPS / SSL and why should I use it?

This gives your site visitors confidence that personal information cannot be viewed by any third party, especially when you're accepting credit/debit card numbers through your website (e-commerce site).

Browsers will display "Secure" next to your URL. In Chrome, for example, the notice is a green lock with the word “Secure”, like this:

How do I activate HTTPS / SSL on my site?

HTTPS and SSL are available for any custom domain, regardless of whether you registered your domain on Strikingly or a third-party registrar. (You can connect a custom domain if you're on the Limited or Pro plan.)

If you registered your domain from Strikingly.com: You don't need to do anything! We'll automatically set up HTTPS for your domain, from installation to renewal, for free.

If you registered your domain with another registrar, and you connected your domain to Strikinglyafter November 1, 2017:You don't need to do anything! We'll automatically set up HTTPS for your domain, from installation to renewal, for free.

If you registered your domain with another registrar, and you connected your domain to Strikingly before November 1, 2017: You will need to update your domain's host records. Please consult the following instructions:

I connected my domain to my site before November 2017. How do I activate HTTPS / SSL?

You may be using our old CNAME host which is dns.strikingly.com. To switch your domain to HTTPS, you’ll need to change your domain's DNS settings (also called "Host records") to use our new host. Here’s how:

Domain: yourdomain.com

CNAME: www

Old value/host: dns.strikingly.com

New value/host: www.yourdomain.com.s.strikinglydns.com (Format should be site URL + .s.strikinglydns.com)Note: yourdomain.com is an example and should be changed to your own custom domain.

Subdomain: subdomain.yourdomain.com

CNAME: subdomain

Old value/host: dns.strikingly.com

New value/host: subdomain.yourdomain.com.s.strikinglydns.com (Format should be site URL + .s.strikinglydns.com)Note: subdomain.yourdomain.com is an example and should be changed to your own custom subdomain.

(For example, if your domain is mysite.com, you will need to change your www CNAME setting from dns.strikingly.com to www.mysite.com.s.strikinglydns.com.)

Please note that SSL activation could take up to 48 hours to complete. Be sure to clear your browser cache and history before you check again to see if the site already loads on HTTPS.

What if I'm loading HTTP assets using custom code?

Please keep in mind that if your site is on HTTPS, then all external content must also be on HTTPS in order for the browser to acknowledge that your site is "Secure". This means that if you load any custom scripts or images by writing custom code, those URLs must also be HTTPS.

For example, if your site is https://www.example.com, and you've added this custom code that loads a script using HTTP:

<script src="http://www.facebook.com/sdk.js"> </script>

Then your site will not be "Secure". To fix this, you must use the HTTPS version of the script instead, like this:

<script src="https://www.facebook.com/sdk.js"> </script>

How does Strikingly offer this service for free?

In the past, installing HTTPS and SSL was a huge pain -- you'd have to purchase an SSL certificate and figure out how to install it on your server. This certificate might cost hundreds of dollars per year. Securing your website should not be this difficult.

We issue HTTPS and SSL from Let'sEncrypt -- it's 100% free, and we'll automatically handle everything for you, from installation to renewal. Let'sEncrypt is an initiative powered by some of the most established companies and organizations on the Internet, from Google to Facebook to Cisco to EFF, to make the entire web more secure.

Still not working?

If it's been over 48 hours since you changed your domain host settings and your domain is still not loading properly on HTTPS, contact us at support@strikingly.com or chat with us.